1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method, an apparatus, a program to process data to be sent to a printing apparatus capable of executing a marginless printing that leaves no blank margins at edges of a print medium, and a printing system including the data processing apparatus and the printing apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Among modes in which an ink jet printing apparatus prints on a print medium, a so-called marginless printing is known, which forms an image on an entire surface of the print medium without leaving any blank margins at peripheries of the print medium. With this marginless printing, a printing operation is performed until there is no blank margin left at at least one of top, bottom, left and right edges of the print medium. To ensure that peripheral parts of the print medium are printed reliably, the printing apparatus ejects ink not only over a print area inside the edges of the print medium but also over an area extending a few millimeters outwardly beyond the edges. Ink that is applied to the outside of the print medium lands on an ink absorbing member on a platen (platen absorbent) and is absorbed in it.
In this printing apparatus, until the amount of ink accumulated in the platen absorbent exceeds a predetermined volume, a problem of contaminated print medium and apparatus scarcely occurs. But once a total volume of accumulated waste ink exceeds an absorption limit of the platen absorbent, the ink oozes out from this absorbent, staining a back of the print medium or, in some cases, adhering to an interior of an ink jet printing apparatus. To deal with this problem, this kind of ink jet printing apparatus cumulatively adds up the volume of waste ink applied to the platen absorbent and, when the sum reaches the absorption limit of the platen absorbent, displays an error prompting a replacement of the platen absorber.
The management of the waste ink volume and the error annunciation described above may be carried out as follows. (A) The printing apparatus may perform the steps of (1) analyzing print data received from a host to calculate the waste ink volume applied during the marginless printing, (2) cumulatively adding a value representing the calculated waste ink volume to a value representing a total volume of waste ink accumulated in the platen absorbent up to that point in time (platen waste ink volume) and (3) when the cumulative value exceeds a predetermined value (e.g., absorption limit), issuing an alarm signal, such as an annunciation that “ink may ooze out of a platen absorbent.” (B) The host may perform the step of (4) displaying an error based on the alarm signal received from the printing apparatus.
With the method described above, however, since the printing apparatus must perform data processing, such as analyzing the print data sent from the host to calculate the waste ink volume applied during the marginless printing and cumulatively adding the calculated waste ink volume, the processing load of the printing apparatus increases, complicating the control. Another problem is that the load of this additional data processing affects other processing (e.g., indexing the received print data), reducing the processing speed of the apparatus as a whole and therefore the printing operation speed. Further, to store a program for executing the data processing described above requires installing a memory of large capacity (ROM) on the printing apparatus side, and such a large-capacity memory is costly. In addition, for the above data processing to be executed, a high-performance calculation means (CPU) is required. Such a high-performance calculation means is also costly. Such processing therefore results in a cost increase.